Gigantic Fireball of Fatherly Pride

However, tomorrow morning I’ll be seeing the cardiac surgeon, and I’m sure there will be plenty of stuff to impart. Health-wise things are pretty much the same, I’ve been getting dizzy quite a bit, I assume from the same old – same old…

Let me tell you a funny story, it doesn’t really speak to being dizzy but I’ll tell you this, it sure made me dizzy.

My daughter is 16, and no driving yet – and no real desire to start. Well OK a minor desire but not very strong. Girls – I guess are different, when I turned 16 it was the only thing I could think of…. Anyways, the weather here has been odd, not much spring and certainly not much summer, the mornings can be dismal and so you dress for hunting walrus in the most northern reaches of the tundra. Then by noon, your walking on the surface of the sun and can’t peel your layers quick enough.

So I’m wearing, my muck-luks and keep getting tangled in my harpoon tether and the sun decides to foists it insistent warmth upon me, her heaving bosom of molten heat rains down upon me, and I am hers, her relentless pulsating rays hitting me again and again in a rhythmic display of….. ahem…. clearly it’s been awhile since I’ve seen the sun…. what I was trying to say was that I had a hoodie on and it was getting way too warm. So while we’re driving I NEED to get the thing off, RIGHT NOW… So I tell my daughter, who rides in the front seat whenever she can, to grab the wheel.

She got this look, this “you can’t be serious” look. But took the wheel anyway, who amongst us hasn’t at one point grabbed the wheel for the driver while they did something. Ok maybe not all of us but a good majority I would say – probably the closest you get to actually driving before you can actually drive. SO, she takes the wheel and I quickly pop off my seatbelt and commence to removing my jacket (let’s ignore the dangers involved with this particular maneuver) lets stay with the fun part of the story and not imagine the car flipping into a ravine and bursting into flames on top of a school bus filled with orphans.

We weren’t going that fast maybe 20 or 30 – now there is a point when taking off your jacket in the car, the exact moment when you might as well be in a full strait jacket, both arms are caught behind you and you are at maximum constriction. If ever someone from your past was going to run up on you and punch you in the face , now would be it. Luckily, that doesn’t happen here.

As my arms are pinned, we start veering of towards the left hand of the road – as I mentioned we weren’t going very fast, but fast enough to seriously mess up my car and give us all some bumps and bruises. It’s ok I think to myself, she’ll make the correct any second. She doesn’t. We keep on, keeping on and now we’re getting to the outside edges of discomfort – closer and closer. Finally after what seems an eternity, my arms spring lose and I grab the wheel and make the correction putting back on the right path, as opposed to exploding into an enormous fireball.

Then I say “what are you doing – didn’t you see the cars getting closer and closer”… so she says…. she says…… she…. says – – – “well, you didn’t say to steer – you said to take the wheel, and….. you didn’t even notice how straight I kept it”

Oh Sweet baby Jesus, that’s why kids pay more for insurance… then I asked her if she would have just keep going “straight” into the other cars…. she says no……………. probably not.